About the Foundation

Twenty years ago, a little boy named Charlie Abrahams developed difficult-to-control epilepsy. As a last resort, his parents turned to a ketogenic diet for help. The diet worked and Charlie became seizure-free. The Charlie Foundation for Ketogenic Therapies was founded in 1994 to provide information about diet therapies for people with epilepsy, other neurological disorders and tumorous cancers.

Since our inception it has been confirmed thousands of times anecdotally as well as by a randomized controlled study that the ketogenic diet improves most children and adults with uncontrolled seizures and many, like Charlie, become drug and seizure free and return to a normal diet.

In recent years, less restrictive versions of the ketogenic diet have been developed making it accessible to a larger segment of the epilepsy population (estimated at over 60 million people worldwide). Today there are over 200 hospitals worldwide with ketogenic diet programs. In the USA, advanced-level epilepsy treatment centers are required to provide ketogenic diet therapy.

New applications of the ketogenic diet for cancer, autism, ALS, Parkinson’s Disease, type-2 diabetes, and traumatic brain injury have emerged. Scientific data regarding these new uses of diet therapy is accumulating rapidly. Variations of the ketogenic diet for these other disorders are being developed. Today, it is the Charlie Foundation’s expanded mission not only to champion ketogenic diet therapy for epilepsy, but provide up-to-date information regarding its expanded use and variations. To this end we have re-named ourselves “The Charlie Foundation for Ketogenic Therapies”.